I Am Just An Ordinary Woman With The Knack Of Making People Love And Trust Me

I am not terribly good at writing letters, which is strange because my day job is one for which I write constantly. I am a journalist call girl. Or at least I was, until recently. I met someone. I quit before he had a chance to ask me to. It's just easier that way.

I think at this juncture, I should defend the men that came to see me. There was nothing wrong with them, and they were not perverts. Most of my clients were single, unhappily married or married to a person that couldn't understand their needs. One even had a wife with cancer. I know you're probably thinking that he's the worst of all, but sex is important. He needed the comfort and solace of flesh against flesh, and in today's society, the only way to get the flesh against flesh comfort is sex.

I guess my role as a sex worker was to reclaim the human contact that has been lost with our island centric way of living. When was the last time you truly just held a person that wasn't your lover with no thoughts of the sensuality of the situation? Touch used to be a very important thing for people. We want to be touched. We need to be touched. Truth be told, I did more pillow talk snuggling with my clients than anything else. Even the submissive clients, after their fill of their fetish, wanted to be cherished. The older men and the lonely men, which seemed to go hand in hand, raced through coitus and settled down for the rest of their time with my head on their chest to talk about their days. This is not the behaviour of deviants and perverts. This is the behaviour of a person reaching out for affection.

I think our world is in a sad state when a man, in order to get the affection, touch and attention that he requires for his mental well being, has to go to a sex worker. I will concede that some men's fetishes are a little too hot to hold for me, but on the whole, nothing that I consented to was so weird that the asker thereof should have a look of shame and disgust on his face as he asked it. I know you probably think that I'm desensitized to sexual weirdness, but a blow job is not weird. Men were ashamed of blow jobs. That was the taboo activity. Some men were even ashamed to enjoy girl on top coitus. Is our world so upside down that for a man to enjoy a woman in a seat of power is wrong?

I know my thoughts have been all over the place, but it's hard to write about these things without being outraged and a little mixed up. I also realize that I've said very little about me. Well, there's very little to tell. At first I needed the money, then I wanted the money. After the thoughts of the money dried up in my head, I turned myself to analysing my clients. In them I found a rich burial ground of feelings. They felt neglected, used, put upon and some other things that make me wish I went to school for psychiatry instead of journalism.

I am just an ordinary woman with the knack of making people love and trust me. These were just men who needed to love somebody who would let them. It's all so simple. Not complicated in the least. There were no perversions too perverse to get in the way of the trusting bond that was needed. Women suffer out loud, and men suffer in silence. Until we allow men to suffer out loud, many a wife will wonder where her husband is during his lunch hour, and in my opinion, a lot of those wives deserve it. (Not all of those wives.)

Of course, my life as a pampered call girl was a little different than the life of a pimped girl. I had the comfort of working in my own home and the freedom to choose with whom I slept. I wouldn't trade my experience for the world. My life as a hooker taught me all about the many faces of love and truth. Not to mention, I can curl a man's toes without even trying. I am proud of me.

I'm Dressed To Kill

I am writing this with an hour before I meet a new john, and as always I am nervous, my heart beats faster and I'm dressed to kill. What boots! What a skirt! If my teenage self could see me now she would swoon with envy and pride. I look amazing and I know it, but that's not the point.

I am also, as always, conflicted. As a women with radical feminist politics, this is the one area where I diverge from the dominant opinions of that group. I am constantly evaluating how I can be a truly feminist sex worker. For me that question of feminist integrity matters more than how to be a safe sex worker, a high paid sex worker, or anything else. My integrity is the most important thing, and I never do anything with a john that I wouldn't do by my own choice.

I turn down the piss requests, the "will you let my dog fuck you?" guys, the ones who try to bargain for more time and less money. I do not turn down the ugly ones, the lonely ones, the very hairy and sexually confused ones. There is something in me that loves them and their small perversions, loves the taboo of sex work and the incredibly novel situations that I find myself in. As an Ivy league masters candidate, this is not my last resort. I've lived with the love of my life for years and am satisfied in every way by our love/sex/friendship. I'm educated and well adjusted, yet I am also a working girl. We tend to defy your expectations, don't we?

For me sex work is more intellectual than anything else. My reward is the money, but most importantly the understanding.

The truth is, I often feel less safe around men I'm not sleeping with for money, the ones who harass me on the street or at my day job. The patriarchy is so overpowering and omnipresent that my feminist self feels in danger almost everywhere. What I like about sex work is the exploration, the digging through layers of sexism and sexual politics, finding where I stand and how men act when they are given free reign. It's a chance to dig through the hidden and bizarre aspects of our lives, and it fascinates me.

Sometimes johns are beautiful. Sometimes they are violent, or threatening.

But they always teach me something, however small, about the realities of human existence and I feel privileged that they let me in.

I Feel More Alive

I became a working girl two and a half years ago, when I was twenty-one years old and in my senior year at a very prestigious U.S. university.

Money played a large part, though maybe not in the usual way. I grew up in an immigrant family with a father who had a Ph.D. but difficulty finding work in the States. As a child, I had all the love and intellectual stimulation in the world, but no money and no real sense of money. I went to public school, never ate out and always bought the cheapest clothes, but so did everyone else I knew. Clipping coupons was just what people did.

Then I went to Very Prestigious University. And my peers changed--they were now scions of privilege, people who hailed cabs without a second thought, flew home to their families in first class and thought nothing of dropping a couple hundred dollars on a dress. What I envied was not their material goods (being a daughter of a financially-strapped intellectual, you learn to look down on those who are too flashy with wealth) but their sense of ease. They never thought about money; I worried about money all the time. I didn't quite articulate it to myself at the time, but I wanted that freedom. I wanted to never think about money.

In my personal life, I had been dating an extraordinarily good man for the previous four years. He came from a background very similar to mine and we immediately understood each other. He was beautiful and smart and the sex was mind-blowing; to this day he ranks as one of the two best lovers I've ever had. There was every reason to marry him, and we were very much headed that way. But I was twenty-one, and I was itching to explore other sex partners and other relationships. For a while he put up with this. I wanted to sleep with girls; he let me. I wanted us to date other people; he grudgingly tried to oblige. But it wasn't enough.

So I became an expensive hooker. It wasn't that easy, of course--I did a lot of research by reading blogs and online forums, worked for an agency briefly, contacted a couple of women already in the business and made them my mentors. In retrospect, I was an excellent little aspiring whore. My college career counselor would have been proud.

For the most part, the men have been gentle and shy and they stirred very little feeling in me, either emotional or sexual. Occasionally I'd meet someone with whom I got along like gangbusters. In that way, it's very much like dating in the real world--nine times out of ten there's no spark, and once in a while you make fireworks.

But the experience itself is always, always fun. I love the ritual-like preparations: showering and shaving and smoothing myself with lotion; selecting the evening's lingerie; putting on eyeliner and doing up my hair while admiring my mostly-naked self in the mirror; throwing condoms, lube, and breath mints into my purse; slipping on my clothes and heels and running out the door to hail a cab.

I'm always dressed a little better than I would be for a real-life date. I'm always a little quicker to laugh, a little more patient and empathetic a listener. It's like being on stage, playing a girl who's just a little more seductive and interesting than yourself. I honed my sexual skills and I loved that too, loved being able to make a stranger's toes curl. Sometimes I didn't succeed, sometimes I could tell that he was disappointed in me, but that happened only two or three times.

The whole time I'm with a client, I'm at a heightened state of awareness. I pay more attention to all my senses and do everything with more care, and in the process I feel more alive.

And then I'm in a cab again, driving home with a nice heft of hundred-dollar bills in my purse. I get home, strip, climb into bed, and masturbate. In part this is because I've got leftover lust--I orgasm easily but it takes a lot to fully satisfy me. In part it's because the whole experience turns me on, and in part it's a kind of reclaiming of my body. At the end of the day, my cunt belongs to me and I'm the one who gets to enjoy it. After I'm done, I lie in bed naked and count the cash. It's crazy and surreal and beautiful.

Of all the things I've done in my short life, this may be the one of which I'm most proud. It's because I've done it entirely for the right reasons. Most of the choices I've made in my life--studying hard, going to a good school, getting on a proper career path--have been at least in part to fulfill the expectations of others, and this has been one-hundred-percent for me. I've been successful and now I have enough investments and such that I never have to worry about money again the way I once did. Two and a half years ago, the world of money and privilege still intimidated the hell out of me, despite my pedigreed education. Now I feel like I can traverse that world with ease.

My relationship ended shortly after I started working; I told him and he was appalled. Fortunately, we have since managed to create a strong friendship out of that wreckage. I've told two girlfriends what I do and both have been incredibly supportive. Recently, I've started dating another man who I've also risked telling about my secret life (the other one of the two best lovers I've ever had). His reaction was better than I dared to hope for--a little titillated, a little turned on, mostly very happy that I'm opening up to him. We're still seeing each other.

I am now twenty-three and trying to coax myself into retirement. I worry daily about the fallout to my family and my budding career if this should come out. I am terrified about the possibility of my picture being splashed across the tabloids, a la Ashley Dupré. I worry about the impossibility of ever sustaining a serious relationship as a working girl. But the experience is so seductive, it's hard to leave. I've resolved to retire soon, and I know I'll miss it.

I Knew Deep In My Teenage Heart That Whores Were Blessed With The Secret Key To True Love

Whores always fascinated me, even as a young woman. They were so gutsy and independent, dark and a little dangerous. They possessed a mysterious sexual knowledge, presumably from the ancient Orient, and got to wear the coolest outfits: thigh-high red vinyl boots and sexy garter belts. They lived in fancy penthouses with white shag carpeting and slept all day. I knew deep in my teenage heart that whores were blessed with the secret key to true love: they could make any man fall in love with them with a single, mind-bending blow-job. Oh god, would I ever be good enough to be a beautiful hooker?

Unfortunately, there weren’t many hookers or pimps in the small college town where I grew up, so I began stealing books on prostitution from the local college library. My panties would get totally wet reading page after page about these cocky women who so easily embraced being sexual criminals. I would fantasize about moving to LA or New York and getting caught by a famous pimp, most likely at a bus stop. He’d romance me with his smooth rap and in no time at all make me his "bottom bitch." I would make one bad-ass hooker.

It wasn’t long before I discovered there actually were hookers and pimps in my hometown, and I began working at a gentleman’s club as a hostess. That lasted a week, and I started turning tricks. It wasn’t quite as I had romanticized it, and I was both thrilled and terrified most of the time. A few months later, I actually did get caught by a pimp passing through town, who took me first to Phoenix to learn how to work the streets and then to Hollywood. It was 1978.

Working the streets in the 70s was a lot of different than it is now. My stable sisters and I would dress like the models we saw in magazines, and my pimp Woody would drop us off on various streets to work long shifts. There were all sorts of rules: never smoke on the stroll (it wasn’t classy, although apparently sucking cock in some random motel room was), never talk to another pimp’s girls, and so on.

Eventually, the glamor wore off and the stress of the job, the weirdo tricks, and the fear and shame took over and I had to stay mildly drunk just to get through the day. I got mugged by another pimp when I broke a cardinal rule about not getting in another pimp’s car. I talked my way out of it and started hiding out in hotel lounges instead of working. Woody threatened to drown me in the Pacific Ocean. By the end of the year, I had had enough, returned home, enrolled in college and got married.

Flash-forward twenty-some years later. Divorced, mid-40s, single mom with two kids in a good career that just didn’t pay the bills. I started going to open mics with my poetry about my days as a hooker and met P. there. She, too, was an ex-hooker, and we became friends. In three years after my divorce, I fucked fifty-seven guys (almost all one-night stands), and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. P. and I started doing a lot of sex worker activism together, and pretty soon all my girlfriends were either former or current hookers, strippers and porn actors. P. decided to start escorting again, even though she was in her 40s like me. She was making money hand over fist, and it took a few more years, but I decided to give it a shot. I made a contract for myself that included such things as, "I will stay sober," "I will process my experience with others," and "I will never sacrifice my safety for money."

I’ve been an internet escort now for almost three years. I’m approaching fifty, am forty pounds overweight, attractive, and am still somewhat surprised by how much money I make. I charge as much as the younger, "hotter" girls do, and I have a total niche. While the young chicks and I share a lot of the same clients, I tend to get the ones who aren’t comfortable with the younger girls, or who want a mature woman with sexual experience. When I’m in bed with a client, I often get a sense of total bliss. I feel so incredibly blessed and lucky. I was born for whoring, it’s my true life’s calling. Working as a whore has been an incredibly empowering experience for me, the money of which is not the least of that, and my only regret is that I struggled financially for so long as a single mom until I started escorting.

I’m currently dating a former client who pays my bills, gives me a steady flow of cash and just bought me a car. He loves the fact that I’m a whore. It’s a turn-on for him. I’ll probably always work to some degree, whether I need the money or not. I just can’t imagine ever being chained to one penis for the rest of my life. It just wouldn’t seem fair.

I Did It All

It all started when I finally had access to the internet at home. I did what I think most people do when living alone (men AND women): I wandered around looking at "naughty pictures." At some point I discovered that most of them led to a particular "hook up" site, which shall remain nameless.

Frankly, seeing all those people on that site seeking out NSA relationships, mostly in various stages of undress, turned me on. It all began with me snapping nude photos of myself and posting them (headless, of course). From there, it was just a spiral further and further into the abyss. Not that I have ANY regrets whatsoever.

First a series of wild one night stands.

Then a series of fuck buddies

Then I was led to phone sex, since many of my new "friends" (and, indeed, they were friends) said I had the knowledge (most men have some kind of kink), open mindedness, and a nice phone voice. While I was doing phone sex, I noticed that most of the high-rate calls went to dominatrices and this wonderful thing called Financial Domination.

I never had the nerve, or just maybe too much morality, to do straight out Financial Domination. But I was avidly curious about domination. One of the friends I met on the "hookup site" told me of a free site where I could probably find people to teach me all about BDSM.

From there, it was easy. As with most sites, there are plenty more men than women (at least "real" women not looking for money) on those sites. Most of them were perfectly willing to teach a newbie, since they got their kicks for free. I had a few men teach me various things... sometimes rather extreme things. Basically I did it all: bondage, strap-ons, verbal abuse, CBT, golden showers, fisting, stomping, foot worship, spanking, hot wax, electric shock, and various other things that would warp most people's minds. But the men loved it and longed for it...and there were so few women willing to do it all.

So, naturally, that eventually led to me charging men for my time and effort. I never became a "pro" domme, since I have a day job and probably wouldn't really make enough to survive on, one hundred percent. Word just spread amongst a few select people, and men would either pay for me to abuse them in various ways or buy me nice gifts, either BDSM related or not.

It's actually quite exhausting work, much more so than I think straight sex for money would ever be. You have to mentally prepare yourself for it all, and often there is a lot of prep work ahead of time and clean up afterward. I still love it, though, and think I fit naturally into the role. Even when I was back on the "hookup" site, sex was always about power and control for me. So, I suppose this path was eventual.

I do fantasize about having my own dungeon someday and just doing this full-time, but I live in a conservative state, and my mother would probably have a heart attack. Plus, I think someday I'd like to settle down...naturally, with a submissive man.

I'd Settle For Somewhere Between Monogamy And Full Blown Prostitution

I'm not sure how I first got addicted to casual sex ads online. I think I'd been a single lesbian for so long that I was sick of everything – sick of the label "lesbian" and curious about men, and sick of having no sex life.

I started sleeping with fairly safe ordinary vanilla married men that I found on Craigslist and other sites. I screened them carefully – phoning them at work, getting real life details that I passed on to my friends so they always knew whom I was with. It really was a grand experiment. But I loved the thrill of it all and it wasn't long before I was seeing kinkier guys, and engaging in more extreme situations such as partner swapping and threesomes. I came to have a regular lover and we even explored swinging parties.

All of this boosted my self-esteem, my sex drive and my joy in living. I always had a smile on my face. I posed for a lesbian sex magazine as a centrefold – even though I was a size 16. I felt like I'd claimed my body and its sexuality. I started wondering if really I was bisexual.

Most of the time it an amazing journey. On the odd occasion, it was dull-as-dishwater sex with men who really bored me and had no skill in the bedroom. During those moments, I did wonder what the difference was between myself and a prostitute. After all, I was sleeping with men I didn't care for, that I'd met on-line, and would never have emotional attachments to. The only real difference was that I wasn't getting any cash at the end of the hour.

I started to put some of my own ads on-line – seeking dinner and drinks before sex, or even a sugar daddy arrangement. None of this I thought qualified me as a pro. Then I received an interesting offer. $1500 for my "anal virginity."

I considered the offer carefully, and talked to a few trusted friends. I found out that once of my friends did have a secret whoring past, while another admitted to working in a brothel as a "receptionist." I was surprised. I decided they seemed well adjusted enough, and that I'd take the money. I emailed the guy to say I'd be up for it. But he never came through with a time or date, and I eventually figured he was stringing me along in exchange for the few naked photos I'd sent.

Figuring I'd already come so far, I posted ads for my services – marketing myself as a curvy F cup, bisexual prostitute. I asked for an outrageous rate, about $2000 an hour, and planned to book a hotel room in a different city for a few days to see how it all went. The emails flowed thick and fast – but none of my potential johns could match the $2000 an hour – apparently the going rate for a BBW woman was about $200, even if she was bisexual and double-degree educated!

I thought about it. $200 an hour didn't actually seem like a lot of money, considering I was earning about $1000 a week just to work in an office. And working in an office was at least a job I felt I could admit to. So I didn't go through with it. Mostly because I didn't think the money would compensate for the stress of a secret life on the side.

Two years down the track, and I'm in a monogamous relationship with another woman. I do love her, but I'm sexually frustrated, miss sleeping with men, and miss the excitement of online hook-ups. I'm glad I never actually accepted cash-for-sex but wish I could negotiate some middle ground of excitement. I'd settle for somewhere between monogamy and full-blown prostitution.

I Figured This Would Be A Little Psychological Experiment

I did not consider myself as a former sex worker until I began reading these blogs from women just like myself. Actually, I don't know if you would consider me as a former "sex" worker. I sold my voice, imagination, and an image instead of my body. Plus size girls don't exactly have a niche carved out for them in the high-priced escort business. Not that I know of anyway!

I was putting myself through college when a chance meeting with a new friend put me in the phone sex path. She told me all about it, and it sounded so new. I went to a private school my entire life and had always been very interested in sex and the psychology of it. I figured this would be a little psychological experiment. Little did I know that I would end up evaluating why I was fucked in the head instead of strange men who wanted me to talk about fucking them up the ass with a carrot.

My friend was giving me a pep talk before my first night. "Make them feel special." "Keep note cards on what they like." "Stay with the same story about how you lost your virginity so no one knows you are lying." I made $300 my first weekend. $300! For just talking! I could not believe it. I was addicted. Literally.

I could not stop. If I was ever away from that phone, all I would be thinking about was when I would be getting back. The money was my drug. I was with a guy, and he knew what I was doing. He was cool with it, but we never saw each other. I became a shell of myself.

I was hearing things from my Johns that I had no idea existed. From men wanting me to laugh at how small their penises were to men wanting me to talk about them getting fucked by a bunch of black men. Men would talk about beating me. I would get calls from all over the world. Some men just wanted to talk, though.

After a while of doing that I realized I had to stop because I was not living my life for me. I was living for the money.

Then the bomb dropped. It had been happening all along, but I had just noticed it after I quit. I was completely and utterly disgusted with having sex. Whenever my boyfriend touched me, I would push him away. The thought of having sex was revolting. I could not stop thinking about how dirty I felt.

I am not saying that anyone who is or has been a sex worker should feel dirty. I think it comes down to the fact that I, myself, felt cheap, in a way. Maybe if I were making the big bucks in the city, I would feel different... Just kidding.

To this day, I am still very open with talking about sex. I still find sex and the psychology of it interesting. I even toy with the idea of being a sexologist. I am now about to marry to the guy I was dating back then. And, my family has no idea that this was ever a part of my life. And, yes, my fiance can touch me without me trying to kick him in the balls.